Spoken Language Terms.

Accent: The way people from different places or groups pronounce words.

Adjacency pairs: A conversation pattern where one person speaks and the other responds.

Agenda setting: When someone decides the main topic of a conversation.

Backchannelling: When a listener gives small verbal or nonverbal cues to show they're listening, while still letting the main speaker talk.

Coalescence: When two sounds merge into one, like "assume" becoming "ashume".

Consonant clusters: A group of consonants together without a vowel in between, like "sp" or "ct" in "aspect".

Consonants: Sounds made by restricting airflow with the tongue, teeth, or lips.

Diphthong: Two vowel sounds combined in one syllable.

Eye dialect: Using nonstandard spellings to show how a character pronounces words.

Fricative: Consonant sounds made by forcing air through a narrow opening. They can be voiced (like "v" or "z") or voiceless (like "f" or "s").

Glottal stop: A quick closure of the vocal cords, like in "uh-oh".

Interlocutor: Someone taking part in a conversation.

Intonation: The rise and fall of the voice while speaking.

Manner of articulation: How speech organs are used to create sounds.

Micropause: A short pause in speech, usually less than a second.

Nasal: When air passes through the nose to make a sound, like "m" or "n" in English.

Phatic communion: Polite phrases used to start conversations and make social communication easier, like saying "How are you?" without expecting a detailed answer.

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in speech.

Phonetics: The study of how humans physically produce speech sounds.

Phonology: The study of how we attach meaning to speech sounds.

Pitch: The highness or lowness of someone's voice.

Place of articulation: The point in the vocal tract where airflow is restricted when making speech sounds, like when the lower lip touches the upper teeth in "labiodental".

Plosive: Consonant sounds made by stopping the airflow. They can be voiced (like "b" or "d") or voiceless (like "p" or "t").

Transcription: Writing down spoken language using symbols and marks to represent speech sounds.

Turn-taking: When people take turns talking. Speaking one at a time

Utterance: A section of spoken language, preceded and followed by either silence or a change of speaker.